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Armed Forces Personnel

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Thurrock, my colleague from Essex. I hope it is not unparliamentary—or lese-majesty—for me to point out that I was just about to tell him exactly what you said, Mr. Deputy Speaker. The Minister has certainly heard the hon. Gentleman’s important intervention and will no doubt respond to it in his own way in due course. I do not want to push my luck, but I should like to refer again to the statement, which I warmly welcome. It says:"““The Government have therefore decided to make the necessary changes to housing legislation, at the earliest opportunity, to ensure that Service personnel are treated fairly and put on an equal footing with other people applying for social housing.””" On the face of it, that is welcome but, quite apart from the armed forces context, the application process for social housing is not always as fair to everyone as the statement suggests. There were changes in the regulations on social housing in 2002—not for local authority allocations, but for 50 per cent. of housing association allocations. People can get allocated housing association accommodation quicker than the indigenous population in an area who are on a local government housing waiting list. If members of the armed forces, particularly those who have served on operations around the world, need to exercise their local connections and return to the locality where they were born and brought up, I would like—if I am not being too greedy—the service that they have given their country to be recognised in preferential treatment, so that their families can be housed. Those families should never have to go into hostels or bed-and-breakfast accommodation. I hope that the Minister will give some consideration to that, because the system as it has operated since 2002 is not quite as fair as the statement suggests. However, I do not want to be churlish or spoil the moment, because I broadly welcome what he and the Minister for Housing and Planning have done. On a completely different point, I am particularly pleased that the Under-Secretary is winding up the debate and I would like to refer to another matter that has been of great importance to my constituents and a source of considerable pleasure and pride: the introduction of the veterans badges. As anyone who is familiar with the scheme will know, the Government keep altering the time scale—rightly so—so that the scheme will encompass more people who have served their country in all wings of the armed forces. For a variety of reasons, the scheme—like many other schemes—was not as well known to individuals as it could have been. There were a number of veterans, particularly in the first wave, who were unaware that they were eligible and did not apply for badges, notwithstanding the tremendous work that the Royal British Legion and other veterans organisations did to try to get as many people as possible to receive their badges. I welcome the fact that the Ministry of Defence and the Veterans Agency encouraged and facilitated Members of Parliament to help their constituents to acquire those badges. Having acquired a significant number of them for my constituents over the past 18 months, I must say that I am particularly pleased not only by how easily, but by how quickly, effectively and efficiently the system works. One takes it for granted—probably through bitter experience—that when one is dealing with a Department, regardless of who the Government are, things can get bogged down, there can be issues with the time scale, or there can be minor problems that string out the whole process. When acquiring the badges on behalf of my constituents, I was amazed by how quickly, effectively and efficiently things were done, and I pay tribute to all those involved. I am also pleased that we were able to have an input and that we were allowed, in effect, to get those badges on behalf of our constituents. I thank the Under-Secretary, who had only just taken up his post when I had a presentation ceremony and a tea party arranged for 180 veterans and their families in my constituency. It is a shock to a Member of Parliament who has put a considerable amount of work into organising such an event—as did the staff in my office—to discover four days beforehand that the Under-Secretary was no longer the Under-Secretary and so would not be able to come. I will not go into the gory details of why the previous Under-Secretary was no longer the Under-Secretary; he ceased to be a Minister and we were Minister-less. The veterans, many of whom had served in the second world war, in the Korean war, and in the Malaysia conflict during the late 1940s, were looking forward to a Minister being present. He may have been a Labour Minister of Defence, but that did not matter to the Minister or to the veterans, because party politics had been cast aside in recognising the debt that we owed to our veterans. The current Under-Secretary very kindly and at very short notice agreed to come to the ceremony. He did not just swan in, present the badges, get photographed and swan out. It was noticeable and greatly appreciated that he stayed to the end, mixing with the families and the veterans, and showing an interest in their lives and what they had accomplished. The feedback that I got after the ceremony was tremendous. The veterans were genuinely appreciative not only of the efforts that went into arranging the presentation of the medals, but of the fact that a Minister who had been in post for 48 hours was prepared to come, as was the Lord Lieutenant of Essex, who kindly stepped in when we thought we would be Minister-less.